Page:The New Penelope.djvu/330

324 On my defenceless head. The burning winds

Seemed drying up the blood within my veins.

The straggling flowers that had outlived the storm

Won but a feeble, half-contemptuous smile;

And if a bird attempted a brief song,

I closed my ears lest it should burst my brain.

After much wandering I came at last

To cooler skies and a less stifling air;

And finally to this more temperate clime.

Where every beauty is of milder type—

Where the simoon nor tempest ever come,

And I can soothe the fever of my soul

In the bland breezes blowing from the West."

NEVADA.

Sphinx, down whose rugged face

The sliding centuries their furrows cleave

By sun and frost and cloud-burst; scarce to leave

Perceptible a trace

Of age or sorrow;

Faint hints of yesterdays with no to-morrow;—

My mind regards thee with a questioning eye,

To know thy secret, high.

If Theban mystery,

With head of woman, soaring, bird-like wings

And serpent's tail on lion's trunk, were things

Puzzling in history;

And men invented

For it an origin which represented

Chimera and a monster double-headed,

By myths Phenician wedded—

Their issue being this—

This most chimerical and wonderous thing